Forfeit
by Killedbyhotpants
Summary: A short one-shot that I wrote with the idea of proxies in mind. OC, some coarse language.


I'm not sure whether I actually fell asleep, or, if I did, for how long I slept. I clearly remember talking with Olivia, and I remember going to bed. Everything after that is pretty vague.

I remember feeling sick and dizzy, and hearing a nearly deafening mix of ringing and buzzing noises in my ears. Every part of my body hurt, to the point where I couldn't focus on anything else. Someone, somewhere, was banging on a door and shouting, but damned if I could make out what they were saying. I couldn't open my eyes to see what was happening, or where I even was. All I wanted to do was to focus on something other than the pain, but no matter what I did, it remained nearly unbearable. A claustrophobic sort of panic overtook me, and my thoughts dissolved into a disordered mess as I lost consciousness.

* * *

When I woke up the pain had lessened, but I now felt cold and horribly sore all over. As I became aware of my surroundings again, I realized that I was curled up into a tight ball, knees under my chin and arms wrapped around my legs. Wherever I was, it was chilly and damp and there were sharp things poking into my skin. It took a while before I could bring myself to move, but I eventually managed to unwrap my limbs from around myself and get into something close to a sitting position. My muscles were in absolute agony, and I kept getting poked and pricked and cut whenever I touched anything solid. I already had a good sense of where I must be, but I wasn't ready to acknowledge it yet. Things like this don't happen to normal people, and they shouldn't be happening to me. But when my vision adjusted to the dim light, I had to face the truth.

I was in the fucking woods.

How I got there, I couldn't even fathom at the moment. I was still disorientated, and felt like I'd been hit by a fucking bus. It took me several minutes to gather my wits enough to create a plan of action as simple as standing myself up while holding a tree for support, and even longer before I could convince my battered body to move an inch towards that goal.

After many false starts, I managed to drag myself to a tree. A bit more dragging, this time upward, and I was as close to standing as I was going to get at the moment. I rested then, the tree supporting the majority of my weight, and I tried to clear my head and think.

...

"Shouldn't you call the police or something?"

"No, I told you, it's... It's not like that. He's not a stalker or murderer or anything like that, he's, like... I don't know. Sometimes I think that this is all in my mind, it's just so surreal. I can never see his face at all, and he's way too tall to be... God, this sounds so crazy, but he's some kind of fucking... I don't know, supernatural thing. Him and those people in masks. I just don't even know what to do; I see them so often now, and sometimes really close to my house. I keep losing chunks of my memory, and sometimes I just find myself wandering around, in places I don't remember walking to. I know it's all because of him, but I don't know what I can do to make it stop."

Olivia listened to her friend with serious concern, and then gave her a minute to calm down and take a few deep breaths once she had finished talking.

"It's ok, everything's going to be ok. I'm going to help you figure this out, and I'll get my brother to come and help too. Next time you see any of those people, let me know. Even if you don't think it's something the police will believe if it's only coming from you, if we both see it they'll probably have to do an investigation, and that might make it go away. Until then I'll stay at your house, so you can finally get some sleep."

Olivia rubbed her friend's shoulder in a supportive way as she wiped away a few tears, a look of grateful relief coming over her features.

"Really? You'll stay with me? Even with all this fucked up stuff happening?"

"Of course. You don't have to go through this alone anymore."

...

As I stood in the dark forest, the moonlight only barely illuminating the seemingly endless trees surrounding me on all sides, I was overwhelmed with the sense that this was some kind of punishment. I had always felt disinclined to tell anyone about the weird things that had happened to me, but I had thought that it was because I didn't want them to think I was insane. Now, I felt like I had broken an unspoken rule by getting Olivia involved.

A wave of hopelessness suddenly seized me, and I almost fell back to the ground as I choked back tears. I gripped the tree hard, leaning my forehead against the bark and losing myself in my emotions for a moment. But I couldn't ignore my situation for any longer. Even if I didn't know how, I had to get out of here, somehow.

Slowly, I raised my head and took a good look around. I couldn't see much around me beside trees, but in one direction, off in the distance, I could see a spot where the moonlight was particularly bright. A clearing? Maybe that was the way out; maybe it was just a random gap in the trees. There was no way for me to know for sure from where I stood, but I needed that little piece of hope to drive me forward. Maybe, if I just made it over there, there would be a road or something and I could get back home.

I carefully pushed myself away from the tree, trying to steady myself on my own two feet. I was wearing only my pajamas; twigs and pine needles dug painfully into my bare feet, and branches kept scraping against my arms. I took one step in the direction of the clearing, then another. A few more, and I had to lean heavily again against a new tree. My muscles didn't seem to want to function properly, and each time I put a foot on the uneven ground, it felt like I was stepping on fucking Lego pieces. I kept going, painfully slow, resting every couple of minutes.

It was when I had made it about halfway to the clearing that I noticed something to my far left - a white oval that seemed to be floating in midair. I froze in place, staring in its direction with rapidly growing fear. It was far too close to the ground to be Him, but... Oh fuck. I could make out two black circles in the upper half of the oval; it was almost definitely a mask. As a stared longer, my eyes adjusted a little more to the darkness, and I could make out a dark mass around the oval.

It was one of _them_. He (or she; I couldn't be absolutely sure) seemed to be crouching down, staring in my direction. He wasn't moving at all, so part of me still hoped that my eyes were playing tricks on me. With my heart pounding, and cold sweat beading on my skin, I very, very slowly continued to move in the direction of the clearing. I tried to be as quiet as possible, keeping my eyes trained on the pale shape. Part of me knew that such precautions were useless, as he had obviously already seen me, but I clung desperately to the hope that if I didn't provoke him in any way, he would leave me alone. Maybe it wasn't the most rational of hopes, but I needed something to keep me focused and moving in the direction of possible safety.

Eventually I reached a point where the trees hid the masked person from view. I looked away just for a few moments, just to make sure that I was still moving in the right direction, and to map out a path between the trees I could take. When I looked back, I almost screamed in surprise and terror. He was now closer, standing up, looking at me from around the trees that had before blocked my view. There was still nothing particularly threatening in his body language; he was just standing there, motionless, looking passively in my direction. I hadn't even heard him move. It was like he fucking teleported.

I stood stock still for a few more second, eyes wide and body shaking with fear. Then, I thought 'screw it', and I made a break for the clearing.

If walking slowly had hurt, then running was absolute agony. Rocks and twigs cut into my feet, and at one point I almost tripped over a root, and said root scraped a good portion of skin off the top of my foot. I sprinted awkwardly, as fast as I could, until I reached a large tree at the edge of the clearing.

Looking around, my last hope of escape quickly vanished. My heart sank as I gazed around the tiny field, surrounded on all sides by more trees, as far as the eye could see.

I looked back over my shoulder, and actually did scream this time. The masked person was standing only a few steps behind me; his arms hung passively at his sides, and his head was cocked slightly to the side, making him look more curious than hostile. Like that actually mattered to me at the moment. He was a fucking man in a mask following me through the woods at night, and he worked for that faceless thing, I knew it. I just wanted to get away.

I tried to both turn and back up at the same time, and the result was that I tripped over the tree's large roots and fell on my back. My legs still hung over the tree roots, and I scrambled in panic trying to get myself back up. I had little success, and it wasn't long before a feeling of resignation to my fate overtook me. Even before I started walking to the clearing, it had been hopeless. Before I told Olivia, it had been hopeless. From the moment I saw Him across the road on my way to the store, it had all been hopeless. I stayed on the ground, looking back up at the masked person with helpless terror in my eyes, waiting to see what he would do.

He took a couple more steps forward, and then tilted his head the other way to get a clear view of me around the tree. Now that he was so close, I could see that he was wearing a black hoodie and a white mask with two large, perfectly round black eyes painted on it. I couldn't see the eyeholes, but I assumed they were there. There seemed to be a thin black line running across the mask about where you would expect the mouth to be, but I couldn't tell for sure. He stood still a little longer, and then reached towards me.

I flinched away and let out a little whimper of fear, but felt nothing. When I looked back at him, his hand was extended out towards me, the palm facing upwards. It looked like he wanted me to give him something.

"W-what do you want?" I choked out, "I don't have anything! Go away! Leave me alone!"

It felt strange to finally speak, and oddly inappropriate. My voice wasn't much more than a pathetic squeak, shaky and desperate. He didn't react, but instead left his hand outstretched, his gaze apparently still fixed on me. I stared back uncertainly, and then looked back at his hand. Then, I got it.

Very slowly, I reached out my own hand, and grabbed his. He held onto my hand tightly, and pulled me to my feet. Once I was standing, he gently guided me to put my arm over his shoulder, and he wrapped one arm around my waist, supporting me and taking weight off my bleeding feet and wobbly legs. He slowly started walking, and since he apparently wanted me to lean on him for support, I did. Part of me felt relieved, and the other part of me had gone through too much to care or even fully acknowledge what was happening.

Soon, he was guiding me away from the clearing, back in the direction from which I had come. But it didn't matter. There had been nothing worthwhile in that direction anyway.

* * *

Author's note: Thank you very much for the positive feedback; it's awesome that there are people who enjoyed this story enough to want to see it continue. Unfortunately, I only intended it to be a one-shot, and as of now I don't have any plans of continuing it. I do have ideas for other (longer) stories, though, about Marble Hornets and the Slenderverse in general. If you've enjoyed what I've written so far, please check them out when I post them! ^^


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